Free Murder Gets a Life by Anne George Page B

but it was what Eddie Turkett said to bring, that it was turkey sausage.”
    “You didn’t order them?” I asked.
    “Sausage biscuits? Lord, no. I didn’t even know the woman’s phone number. How could I have ordered them?”
    I shrugged.
    “Drink your water, everybody,” Tiffany reminded us. “We really need to get going.”
    Mary Alice got up, grumbling. “We’re not going to find a damn thing in here.”
    She was wrong. We found huge thornbushes and vines so heavy that Tarzan, Cheetah, and Jane could have swung together. When we reached the river, we found plastic milk cartons and a few dead fish.
    “Look,” Henry said. He pointed across the stream where two red foxes were looking at us in surprise.
    We sat down for a moment and drank some more water. Sister reached in her pocket and pulled out a tiny phone. “Gotta check my voice mail.”
    The rest of us laughed. There was something so incongruous about struggling through the woods and then checking your voice mail.
    “Let’s sit on that rock and put our feet in the water,” Fred said. It sounded good to me. To Henry and Tiffany, too. But we hadn’t made it to the rock when Sister screeched, “Shit! Blow the whistle, Fred!”
    “What?” all four of us asked.
    Sister was doing a dance, thrusting the phone out first to one of us and then the other. “Come here.Listen. You’re not going to believe this. Blow the whistle, Fred.”
    Henry got there first. “Punch four,” Sister said, handing him the phone. He listened and began to grin. “I’ll be damned.”
    “Let me hear.” I took the phone from him and punched four.
    “ Mother Crane .” Sunshine’s voice came over the phone clearly. “ I’m all right. Tell Ray I’m all right .”
    “What is it?” Fred and Tiffany were standing by me.
    “It’s Sunshine.” I handed the phone to Fred. “She’s okay.”
    “Where is she?” Tiffany asked.
    “She didn’t say. She just said to tell Ray she was all right.” Tears of relief sprang to my eyes. I brushed them away and grinned.
    Fred handed the phone to Tiffany and blew the whistle several times. “I hope everybody stops hunting when they hear that,” he said.
    “They’ll probably think we’ve found the body,” Mary Alice said happily.
    She was right. Sheriff Reuse, followed by a deputy, was running across the cotton patch as we exited from the pines.
    “Sunshine’s okay,” Mary Alice called.
    The sheriff slowed to a walk. “You found her?”
    Mary Alice held up the phone. “Got a message.”
    By this time, the sheriff had reached us. He leaned over, breathing raspily with his hands on his legs. And this was the man we didn’t think sweated.
    I held out my bottle of Evian. “You want some water?” I asked. “Pour some on your wrists and then splash some behind your neck.”
    “I’m fine,” he said. He obviously wasn’t, but if hewanted to pass out in a cotton patch being macho it was his business. “What did she say?”
    “Said she’s fine. Here.” Mary Alice handed him the phone. “Punch four.”
    He straightened up and took the phone. In a minute, he nodded his head and said, “Blow your whistle, Leroy.”
    Leroy, redheaded with the beginnings of a sunburn across his nose, asked how many times he should blow it. What signals had they decided on?
    “We didn’t decide on any, though we should have.” Mary Alice took the phone from the sheriff. “Look, y’all. Here come the Turketts. Jump up and down and look happy so they’ll know it’s good news.”
    “Lord,” Fred grumbled.
    “You can just wave and smile, Fred.” To my amazement, he did what Sister said.
    Kerrigan was the first to arrive. Our message had gotten through because, hand on her heart, she said, “It’s good news, isn’t it?”
    “The best,” Sister assured her.
    Kerrigan turned to Eddie, Howard, and Meemaw who was making surprisingly good time across the cotton rows. “It’s good news!”
    “Oh, thank the Lord.” Meemaw caught up to